Hullabaloo

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

 

Opportunity costs

by Tom Sullivan

"TRUMP" truck I spotted yesterday downtown.

Donald Trump likes to blast rally goers with "You Can't Always Get What You Want." That sentiment may be sinking in with some Bernie Sanders supporters as well. A Sanders activist still opposed the "neoliberal warmonger" is nevertheless distributing Clinton yard signs here this week. (Campaign veterans can take the yard signs discussion offline.)

Maybe the "TRUMP" truck got to him.

Perhaps it wasn't Hillary Clinton's debate performance last week, but Trump's, that is closing Hillary Clinton's "enthusiasm gap." Polls out yesterday show Clinton opening a national lead of five points (CNN/ORC) to six points (CBS/NYT ) over Trump. CNN reports:

Clinton's boost in the race stems largely from gains on Trump among men (from a 22-point deficit with that group in early September to just a 5-point one now) and sharply increased support from independents, who broke heavily in Trump's favor in the early September poll but now tilt Clinton, 44% to 37%.

Although the CNN poll may not have capture reaction to the Trump tax leak, news that Trump may have avoided paying taxes for nearly two decades will not help him. CNN again:

Voters are in near-universal agreement, though, that paying taxes is every American's civic duty. Nearly 9-in-10 feel that way while just 12% say they see taxes as an unnecessary burden to be avoided. Even among Trump backers, 79% see them as a civic duty.

The poll, conducted entirely after last Monday's presidential debate, finds Clinton's supporters increasingly enthusiastic about voting for president this year (50% are extremely or very enthusiastic now, up from 46% earlier in the month), while Trump backers' enthusiasm has ticked downward, from 58% to 56%.

Real Clear Politics averages yesterday morning when I saw the TRUMP truck showed Trump ahead in North Carolina by 0.3 points. By dinnertime, Clinton had moved ahead by 0.2. In the "newly insane state of North Carolina," you can't always get what you want and, sometimes, you take what you can get.

Yes, there are those among us that want to "send a message" with out votes (whether or not anyone can hear it). Brian Beutler noted how after stating plainly that Donald Trump is unfit to be president and Hillary Clinton is "undeniably capable of leading the United States,” the Chicago Tribune nonetheless endorsed Gary Johnson, the Libertarian, hoping "Johnson does well enough that Republicans and Democrats get the message." About something.

Some may see the election as an opportunity to "send a message," but may miss their chance to send the right one. Beutler writes:

One downside of the Tribune’s pox-on-both-houses argument is that if Johnson has a strong showing in November—say, 17 percent to Clinton’s 41 and Trump’s 40—that would send a message that a coin-toss between a fit and unfit candidate is an acceptable risk for the country. But the most important downside would be the opportunity cost of denying Trump the ass-kicking he deserves.

The Republican Party nominated an ignorant, bigoted, authoritarian candidate to be president of the United States. The best message that the country can send with the popular vote is that if you try to win the presidency by stoking race hatred and promising to degrade the Constitution, you will lose and lose badly—that a fascist does not have an even-odds chance of becoming the most powerful person in the world.

Amen. To that end, one Bernie activist here is trying to send that message ... with 2,000 Clinton yard signs.


Undercover Blue 10/04/2016 06:00:00 AM

Monday, October 03, 2016

 
Trump's history of filing for bankruptcy

by digby

This is Trump today on the stump talking about the early 1990s which he characterizes as the worst economic slump since the great depression (which is total bullshit.) Then he said this, which is simply delusional:

Trump said today that in early 1990s many of his competitors declared bankruptcy, but he never did. Trump declared bankruptcy in '91 & '92. pic.twitter.com/kBPq36XFG8

— John Aravosis (@aravosis) October 3, 2016

Snopes:

Trump-controlled businesses have sought bankruptcy protection several times after those entities — nearly all of them casino properties — were several hundreds of millions of dollars or more in debt (although the exact number of bankruptcies tied to Trump is debatable, as his spokespeople routinely disclaim that "many of the filings occurred when Trump was no longer involved in the businesses"):
#1) Trump Taj Mahal (1991):   The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City opened in 1990, with Trump financing the completion of its construction with $675 million in junk bonds at 14% interest. By the following year the casino itself was in debt to the tune of $3 billion, while Trump himself owed some $900 million in personal liabilities.
In order to keep the Taj Mahal afloat, Trump struck a deal with his lenders in which he gave up half his ownership share and equity in the casino, sold his Trump Shuttle airline and his Trump Princess 220-foot yacht, and agreed to a bank-set limit on his personal spending in exchange for a lower interest rate and additional time to make his loan payments. 

#2 and #3) Trump's Castle and Trump Plaza Casinos (1992):   Less than a year after the Taj Mahal bankruptcy Trump filed for Chapter 11 protection again for two more Atlantic City hotel-casinos, the Trump Plaza and Trump's Castle, over their inability to make principal and interest payments on bonds. The Plaza ($550 million in debt) and the Castle ($338 million in debt) were competing against each other, as well as against the Taj Mahal, and Trump gave up a 50% share in exchange for more favorable terms on the debts. 

#4) Trump Plaza Hotel (1992):   Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy protection a third time in 1992 over the Trump Plaza Hotel on New York's famous Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park in midtown Manhattan. Once again, Trump gave up a 49% stake in the property to secure more favorable terms from lenders on the luxury hotel's debt of more than $550 million. 

#5) Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts (2004):   In 1995, Donald Trump established Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts as a publicly traded company, an entity that eventually consolidated his three Atlantic City casinos (Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Castle, and Trump Plaza), along with other properties, under one company. In 2004, Trump sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the company, with filings listing about $1.8 billion in debt. Yet again, Trump's ownership in the business was reduced, from 47% to 27%, in order to obtain more favorable terms from lenders. 

#6) Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009):   After its 2004 bankruptcy, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts was renamed Trump Entertainment Resorts (TER), and that latter entity went Chapter 11 in 2009 with a debt of $1.2 billion. Trump fought with his board of directors over how to restructure the company and ended up reducing his ownership share of the business once again (to 10%) and resigning as chairman of the board.

And then there's this:

Donald Trump has undertaken a number of business projects that ultimately failed (or failed to live up to his lofty projections) without resulting in bankrupcties, including:

Trump SteaksGoTrump (online travel site)
Trump AirlinesTrump VodkaTrump MortgageTrump: The GameTrump MagazineTrump UniversityTrump Ice (bottled water)
The New Jersey Generals (pro football team)
Tour de Trump (bicycle race)
Trump Network (nutritional supplements)
Trumped! (syndicated radio spot)

Also this, just for starters on his storied real estate career.

Trump's failed Baja condo resort left buyers feeling betrayed and angry

Donald Trump’s Florida Business Failure: Tampa Condo Tower Example Of Controversial Deals


Update: This article by David Kay Johnston about what Trump may have done to get that loss in 95 is fascinating.

digby 10/03/2016 06:00:00 PM

 
The sniffing revelation

by digby

The Reverend Pat Robertson, a man who has won Republican presidential primaries, explained Donald Trump's sniffing:

“Trump sniffing may have been a sign of the Holy Spirit coming out of him.The Holy Spirit affects people in strange ways. Some people go into a frenzy, some people start laughing uncontrollably, some people bark like dogs. Apparently, Trump sniffs.”

Sure, why not?


digby 10/03/2016 04:30:00 PM

 
The female Donald

by digby

I haven't commented much on the Trump and his daughter Ivanka stuff because it's creepy speculation and I have no way of knowing what it's all about. But there's no doubt that his relationship with her has had an erotic component. There are a bunch of pictures like this out there.

This incident is particularly weird:

In 2013, Trump and 31-year-old Ivanka went on Wendy to promote the most recent season of The Apprentice. During the show, Wendy Williams had them play what should have been a harmless, not-at-all sexualized game in any normal situation. That is not what happened. 

When asked about his favorite thing he has in common with his daughter, Trump answered with a smirk: "Well, I was going to say “sex,” but I can’t relate that to her."

weird https://t.co/Blv5wX7GVP pic.twitter.com/hNCKVPC5Ob

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) October 3, 2016

?????

I have no idea what's actually between them. It could just be a result of Trump's general view of women which is very simple: fuckable and unfuckable. Only the former are worthy so maybe his love for his daughter requires him to see her in those terms, I don't know.

But I also think his view of his daughter is rooted in narcissism and his creepy eugenics philosophy. She's the female Donald:

You know who is one of the great beauties of the world, and I helped create her? Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She’s six feet tall. She’s got the best body. She made a lot of money as a model—a tremendous amount. 

He sees her as a reflection of him and a natural consequence of his superior genes.  Again, this belief in eugenics is one reason why the white supremacists love him so much.

.

digby 10/03/2016 03:00:00 PM

 
Trump the "economic genius"

by digby

I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

According to focus groups, the exchange in last Monday’s campaign debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that really offended people of all political stripes was not Trump’s revolting attitudes about women, although that was plenty offensive. It was the “taxes comment.” The Washington Post’s report on its focus group of undecided voters in North Carolina had this headline: “When Trump said that not paying taxes ‘makes me smart,’ undecided voters in N.C. gasped”:

“That’s offensive. I pay taxes,” said Townley, 52, a program ­director for a local council of governments. 

“Another person would be in jail for that,” said Jamilla Hawkins, 33, who was sitting beside him in the Crescent conference room at the Embassy Suites in this city of 150,000 near Raleigh.

Pollster Frank Luntz’s dial-o-meter focus group also showed a sharp plunge for Trump when the tax discussion came up. After the debate Trump even denied saying it, which was ridiculous since more than 80 million people watched him do it.

Clinton was correct when she said that what little we knew from the few of Trump’s tax returns previously made public for various reasons was that he often pays little or no federal taxes. Over the weekend, the New York Times published abombshell article featuring Trump’s 1995 tax returns from several states, which had been delivered anonymously to the paper. It not only showed that Trump had paid no federal income tax that year but that he had claimed nearly a billion dollars in losses. Tax experts told the Times that could mean he wrote off $50 million per year ever since. This certainly lends credibility to the speculation that he has refused to release his returns for that reason — because he has rarely or never paid even a nickel in federal income tax. Obviously, if he wants to end that speculation and prove everyone wrong, he could simply release the returns.

The Times had asked Trump for comment, so he undoubtedly knew this story was going to break before he took the stage at his Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania, where he proceeded to deliver one of his most unhinged rants in many months. Trump accused Hillary Clinton of being unfaithful to her husband and performed an imitation of her fainting spell to illustrate that she’s weak, saying, “She’s supposed to fight all these different things and she can’t make it 15 feet to her car.” (He must have skipped the chapter on Franklin D. Roosevelt in high school history class.) Between his disastrous debate performance and this news,which cuts to the heart of his main argument for the presidency, Trump ended a very bad week with a very, very bad night.

His surrogates were rattled as well. On Sunday morning they sent out their big guns, the people reportedly closest to Trump at the moment, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The two of them put on performances that would be career-enders if they hadn’t already ended them by taking on the roles of Trump majordomos. They both made the rounds to declare that Trump is a “genius,” with Christie declaring that the tax revelation is “a very good story” for Trump because it shows him as the comeback kid. Giuliani compared Trump to Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs, saying that like them, “He had some failures and then he built an empire.” He asked thefundamental question: “Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman?”


The idea that a man whose business has gone bankrupt four times, who has stiffed thousands of small business owners, who has been sued all over the country for fraud, who used his charity as a slush fund and who now has been revealed to have reported to the government that he lost more than $915 million — in a year in which the stock market gained 37 percent! — is an economic genius could only be true in Bizarro World.

Trump himself tweeted, “I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them.” In fact, Trump’s tax plan is standard-issue GOP Club for Growth trickle-down. It’s the most conventional aspect of his entire platform. And the fact that he’s a card-carrying member of the 1 percent means that he’s proposed a tax plan that will benefit him and his family “big league.” He would drastically cut corporate taxes, reduce the top rates and eliminate the estate tax, providing a windfall for his children. And then there’s this little noticed provision, via the Washington Post’s Wonkblog:

Trump’s plan would dramatically reduce taxes on what is known in tax circles as “pass-through” entities, which do not pay corporate income taxes, but whose owners are taxed at individual rates on their share of profits. Those entities are the most common structure for small businesses and increasingly popular for larger ones as well. They are also a cornerstone of the Trump Organization. On his 2015 presidential financial disclosure report, Trump listed holdings of more than 200 limited liability corporations, which is a form of pass-through.

This is unusual. Recent GOP nominees have simply proposed reducing the top tax rate, which would effectively lower the pass-through rate. Mitt Romney wanted to lower it to 28 percent, John McCain picked 35 percent and George W. Bush proposed 33 percent. Trump wants to lower that rate to 15 percent. I’ll leave it to the experts to sort out why he thinks that’s a good idea, but suffice to say it’s clear that he would personally benefit from it.

It should be pointed out that Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has proposed a tax plan that would create a new top bracket of 43.6 percent and a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for anyone making more than $1 million. She would also raise the estate tax. None of this benefits her or her family. In fact, one of he most glaring differences between these two wealthy candidates is that Bill and Hillary Clinton go out of their way to pay substantially more in taxes than is necessary. They can afford it, certainly. They are reportedly worth more than $100 million. But it does show a very different philosophy than Donald Trump, whose alleged $10 billion fortune is vastly larger. He apparently feels that paying no taxes makes him smarter than all of us dumb citizens who do.

If you think Trump is a genius for gaming the system so that he never has to pay federal income tax, that’s your prerogative. But please don’t ever say another word about “makers and takers” or the 47 percent again. We taxpayers have been carrying Donald Trump for 30 years while he was living in his golden palace. He’s the biggest welfare queen in the world.

Brutal new ad from the Clinton campaign on Trump's tax avoidance... pic.twitter.com/L360MOWTbp

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) October 3, 2016

digby 10/03/2016 01:30:00 PM

 
Trump's sacrifice

by digby

I sure hope this comes up in the next debate:

On July 18, 2011, Trump appeared on Fox News and was asked about President Barack Obama's comments that well-to-do Americans should make a sacrifice for the country by paying more in taxes. He replied:

"Well, I don’t mind sacrificing for the country, to be honest with you. But you know, you do have a problem because half of the people don't pay any tax. And when he's talking about that he's talking about people that aren't also working, that are not contributing to this society. And it's a problem. But we have 50 percent. It just hit the 50 percent mark. Fifty percent of the people are paying no tax."

Yeah, he said that.

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digby 10/03/2016 12:00:00 PM

 
He prefers vets who don't have PTSD

by digby

You know, the strong ones. Like him. Who went to military boarding school and had to endure some really tough pillow fights.

Trump, this morning, to a room full of veterans:

“When people come back from war and combat and they see maybe what the people in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it.” 

The room was silent when he said it.
digby 10/03/2016 10:30:00 AM

 
The fundamental divide

by digby

I wish I understood why so many liberals are reluctant to admit this. It is clear as day. I wish it weren't so but it is.

The conflict between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump over racial and gender issues in Monday’s debate reflects a deep divide in voter attitudes: views on the influence of men, women and racial groups in society are closely related to vote preferences.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, mainly released Sunday, finds that majorities of Hillary Clinton’s supporters believe minorities and women have too little influence in American society, while half say men and whites have too much influence. For all his outsider appeal, Donald Trump’s supporters, by contrast, are far more apt to endorse the status quo in this regard.

See PDF with tables and full results here.

All told, the survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that about half of Americans think women, men and whites have about the right amount of influence in society these days. Fewer -- three in 10 -- say the same about racial and ethnic minorities.

Of the rest, many more say women have too little rather than too much influence (42 vs. 10 percent). The gap also is wide for minorities (40 percent say they have too little influence, 23 percent too much). In contrast, Americans overall are more apt to say men and whites have too much rather than too little influence, 37 vs. 9 percent for men, 34 vs. 12 percent for whites.

The divisions among Clinton and Trump supporters are deep. Two-thirds of Clinton supporters say minorities have too little influence in the country these days, while just 17 percent of Trump supporters agree. Among Clinton supporters, 58 percent say women have too little influence; only 21 percent of Trump’s say the same.

Further, 50 percent of Clinton’s backers say men have too much influence, and 53 percent say the same about whites. That view plummets to 20 and 8 percent, respectively, among Trump voters.

Instead, roughly two-thirds of Trump supporters say women, whites and men alike have about the right amount of influence. Four in 10 Trump supporters say minorities have the right amount of influence -– and as many say they have too much.

These results stand up in a statistical model. Controlling for demographics, partisanship, ideology and presidential approval, seeing too little influence for whites and men and too much influence for minorities and women independently predicts support for Trump. Other than disapproval of Barack Obama, which is by far the best predictor of support for Trump, views of group influence have a similar effect as partisanship, ideology and race.

This is what's driving the Trump phenomenon. Of course it is.   

digby 10/03/2016 09:00:00 AM

 
A quick Senate scorecard

by Gaius Publius

[Note: Alaska race updated.]

I want to offer a quick Senate scorecard for the upcoming election, not just races to watch and their current status, but the effect of the races on the "final score" — control of the Senate until the wipeout in 2018 puts the Republicans firmly in control.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (source)

To do this, I want to organize the races the way basketball or football analysts look at your favorite college team's upcoming season — games grouped by Should Be Easy, Tough Call, On the Bubble, Would Take a Miracle. For this exercise, we'll ignore the baked-in results in places like California (Democratic and will stay that way), and list the races to watch by these categories:

• Washouts — four contests (IL, WI, OH, FL)
• No Change — one contest (CO)
• Possible Flips — three contests (NH, PA, IN)
• Toss Ups — three contests (NV, NC, MO)
• and one Wild Card race — Alaska

We will look briefly at these 12 races. Others may disagree, but it looks to me like these are the ones to watch.

For reference, the state of the Senate today is:

• Republicans: 54 seats
• Democrats: 44 seats
• Independents: 2 seats (caucusing with Democrats)

No independent is up for reelection this cycle. Democrats need a net pickup of +4 to tie in the Senate (50-50) and +5 to take it outright (ignoring for now the "60 vote rule" that makes sure no progressive legislation gets passed). Here are races in each group, with the likeliest outcomes by group in parentheses.

Washouts (+2 D)

The "washout" states are those where one party has conceded the race by withdrawing money. All four seats are held by Republicans. Two of the Democrats have washed out, as have two of the Republicans. These are:

Illinois, currently Republican
Winner should be Tammy Duckworth (D)

Wisconsin, currently Republican
Winner should be Russ Feingold (D)

Ohio, currently Republican
Winner should be Rob Portman (R)

Florida, currently Republican
Winner should be Marco Rubio (R)

Net result: +2 Democrats.

From Electoral-Vote.com:

Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy in Florida, incumbent Republican Mark Kirk in Illinois, Democratic challenger Ted Strickland in Ohio, and incumbent Republican Ron Johnson in Wisconsin are doing badly enough that their parties either have already cut off the money (the two Republicans), or are close to doing so (the two Democrats).

I think most would call these races closed. Note: Sen. Chuck Schumer interfered with progressive challengers in Florida and Ohio, both of which are now projected to stay Republican. The +2 Democrats could easily be +4 Democrats in this category, absent that interference. (Update: Start here, search on "Sestak", then on "Florida".)

No Change

This category could be larger (I had the New Hampshire race here at first), but let's play it safe.

Colorado, currently Democratic
Winner should be Michael Bennet (D)

The Hill on Bennet:

Once viewed as one of the only ripe opportunities for Republicans, Bennet appears poised to sail to reelection. Republicans aren’t coming to the aid of Darryl Glenn, a county commissioner who trumpeted his conservative bona fides during the primary. But he’ll need to look beyond his base in a state that Obama carried twice and also has a large Latino population.

Michael Bennet is this guy, by the way, from 2014: "Shorter Republicans: 'We forgive Michael Bennet for trying to win the Senate." Shorter Sen. Bennet: "Glad we're still friends.'"

Possible Flips (+2 D, maybe)

These are fairly close races where the Democrat could flip a Republican seat. I have three of these:

New Hampshire, currently Republican
Leader is Kelly Ayotte (R)

Pennsylvania, currently Republican
Leader is McGinty (D)

Indiana, was Republican, now open
Leader is Bayh (D)

If the current leader wins each seat: +2 Democrats, but this is iffy.

In New Hampshire, Ayotte has been surging (+8 in a mid-September Marist poll), but she's coming from behind. Hassan could take it, but I'm not confident.

The Hill on the Pennsylvania race:

The presidential race appears to be trickling into Toomey’s reelection. Political observers in the state say he’s running a strong campaign, but his dip in the polls is largely thanks to the top of the ticket.

Toomey continues to withhold his support from Trump. But his opponent, Katie McGinty, a little-known former gubernatorial chief of staff, has been helped by Clinton’s consistent lead over Trump in the Keystone State. McGinty has maintained a lead since mid-July, though one survey has Toomey up 7 points.

RealClearPolitics has this race a wash, but I think Toomey has the edge. In Indiana, Bayh is only up by single digits, but has never trailed.

(Note: Chuck Schumer interfered with non-establishment Democrat Joe Sestak in the primary, someone whom many expected to beat Toomey. Schumer-chosen candidate McGinty has a steeper uphill climb.)

Too Close To Call (A wash)

There are three races here — Nevada, North Carolina, Missouri — and Republicans are defending two of the three seats. (Nevada is an open seat, but was Democratic.)

Nevada, was Democratic, now open
Joe Heck (R) has a slight lead over Catherine Cortez Masto (D)

North Carolina, currently Republican
Richard Burr (R) has a low single-digit lead over Deborah Ross (D)

Missouri, currently Republican
Roy Blunt leads Jason Kander (D), but not by much

Republicans flip one seat if all three leaders win. Most likely positive case for the Democrats is no change (two wins and one loss). If Democrats win out: +2 Democrats.

Subtotal (+2 D or +4 D)

If you're counting the total to this point, Democrats are up +2 among the Washout races, then it's a wash until the Too Close To Call races, where there's either no change (more likely) or they go up +2 (by winning them all).

In other words, our best case so far gives the Democrats +4 seats, and our middle case gives them +2 seats. That's not enough to take the Senate.

Wild Card race: Alaska

Alaska is a Republican seat at the moment, with Lisa Murkowski defending it. A pro-Sanders Democrat is in position to win the seat — and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants him to lose (!).

Howie Klein has written about the Alaska race here:

[T]he populist Democratic Party in the state-- which gave Bernie a 81.6% to 18.4% landslide over Hillary and massive victories in every single electoral district (numbers that beat Trump too)-- also nominated Ray Metcalfe, a former Anchorage state Rep who was one of the state's original Bernie for President organizers. Although he won the party nomination, 15,198 to 10,074, Metcalfe is not a Schumer kind of candidate....

The DSCC (and Alaska's grotesquely corrupt Democratic Party establishment) are worried that-- with teabagger and Trumpist Joe Miller in the race as a Libertarian and tearing Murkowski apart from the right-- Metcalfe could actually win. ... That's how Schumer's reptilian mind works. So he's encouraging a proven corruptionist buddy of his, Mark Begich, to mount a last minute write-in campaign to draw votes away from Metcalfe and throw the election to Murkowski!

More from Electoral-vote.com (my emphasis)

Alaska looks like it's going to become a free-for-all. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is running for reelection, trying to keep a seat that she last won as a write-in candidate after being primaried by tea partier Joe Miller. She could end up facing four viable opponents: Ray Metcalfe (the Democratic nominee), Margaret Stock (an independent with a very impressive resume), Miller (who's back, as the recently-chosen nominee of the Libertarian Party), and possibly former Democratic senator Mark Begich (who may run—wait for it—as a write-in candidate). 30% of the vote could very well win this thing.

Schumer has succeeded in every race he tried to influence, so I'll give Murkowski the win.

Alaska, currently Republican
Lisa Murkowski (R) has the edge in a five-person race

Update: Mark Begich, who was "being asked to launch a write-in campaign," has dropped out of the race. Ray Metcalfe is polling well behind Murkowski and Miller.

Net change: None.

Your most likely 2017 Senate

The most likely 2017 Senate, the high point of the bell-shaped curve, if all current likelihoods hold, appears to be this:

• Republican: 52 or 50 seats
• Democrats: 46 or 48 seats
• Independents: 2 seats (caucusing with Democrats)

So there it is, a scorecard to follow as these races evolve. For the Democrats to reach 50 seats, watch the Too Close To Call races, plus Alaska.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP



.
Gaius Publius 10/03/2016 07:30:00 AM

 

Taxes are for suckers

by Tom Sullivan

In December 2010, I commented on what Paul Krugman called the right's “humbug factories” (conservative think tanks). One need not invoke malice to explain the behavior of certain politicians, he wrote, while ignorance remains a possibility.

But Krugman left out a third possibility. His column reminded me of the 1978 “Great Pool Shootout,” as ABC’s Wide World of Sports billed the live tournament between fifteen-time world straight pool champion, Willie Mosconi, and well-known pool hustler, Minnesota Fats. A relentless self-promoter, Limbaugh-like with a touch of W.C. Fields, Fats was asked beforehand if he practiced much. The hustler replied with characteristic bombast, “Practice is for suckers.” Mosconi won the contest in three straight sets.

And here we are nearly 40 years later. The bombastic Donald Trump handily lost his first debate to Hillary Clinton and faces two more. Dan Balz at the Washington Post writes:

Donald Trump has one week to prepare for his next debate with Hillary Clinton. It is a critical event for him. Yet everything he’s done before and after the first debate sends a loud, clear message: He seems to think debate prep is for chumps.

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post commented on what was a very bad week for Donald Trump, one capped by a disjointed speech in Manheim, Pennsylvania Saturday in which he mimicked Hillary Clinton's stumbling into a van. Cillizza observes:

True character tends to be revealed when times are tough. Anyone can be magnanimous, happy and generous after a win. It's a hell of a lot harder to maintain that dignity and charitableness after a defeat.

Trump has shown throughout this campaign that he runs well while ahead. His chiding of his opponents, his dismissiveness of the political press — it all plays great when he is on top of the political world.

But, last night in Manheim, he showed what we got glimpses of almost a year ago in Iowa: When he's down, Trump is like a cornered animal. He lashes out — at everyone. That is when he's at his most dangerous — to his own prospects and those of the party he is leading.

Those observations may not be earth-shattering, but we may get the opportunity for more shortly. Grace under fire, Trump is not.

Appearing at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, former presidential candidate Jeb Bush responded to a student's question about Trump's claims of a rigged election:

“Trump only talks about things being rigged when it’s not going well for him,” Bush replied. “It’s a leading indicator.”

The revelations in yesterday's New York Times about Trump's nearly billion-dollar loss in his leaked 1995 taxes reverberated in Toledo, Ohio where Hillary Clinton has struggled to convince voters that Trump's success is not as it appears :

The revelations about the Republican nominee’s taxes gave Clinton a fresh opportunity. In conversations around Toledo, many voters said they were offended by Trump.

“It’s disgusting,” said Steve Crouse, 65, the owner of Toledo’s downtown Glass City Cafe and a separate printing business. “As a businessman, he’s got that right to do that. It’s the way the laws were set up. But it’s not right. I would feel guilty if I didn’t pay anything. It’s flat-out cheating the government. You’re using all the roads, the fire department, the police, so you should pay for that.”

As with practice, taxes are for suckers seems to be Trump's philosophy. In Trump's mind, that makes most of his working-class supporters, what?

The Trumpish aftermath of round two with Hillary Clinton ought to be entertaining. Too bad Howard Cosell is not around to officiate.


Undercover Blue 10/03/2016 06:00:00 AM

Sunday, October 02, 2016

 
QOTD: Mr Magoosolini

by digby

I can hardly believe it, but this is what he said, defending Trump:

"Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman?" 

In fact, his performance this morning on the all the shows indicates that someone's put LSD in the water at Trump tower.  They're all tripping. It's the only logical explanation.

.

.
digby 10/02/2016 06:00:00 PM

 
This strikes me as being somewhat important

by digby

Ruby Cramer at Buzzfeed reports on Clinton's voter registration efforts:

[T]he invitation to visit her campaign’s webpage, IWillVote.com, is part of a three-month ongoing effort inside the Democratic nominee’s Brooklyn headquarters that, in the span of Tuesday alone, resulted in a total of 64,000 new voter registrations — a feat that laid bare the significant gap between Donald Trump’s bare-bones operation and the field program that Clinton and her hundreds of aides have been building for some 17 months.

Clinton has said her campaign has set a goal of registering 3 million new people to vote. Tuesday’s 64,000 count does not include the voters the campaign has registered online on other days, or through its field program on the ground in the battleground states, but the nationwide Voter Registration Day push, outlined by a campaign official late Thursday, provides a snapshot of the capabilities of a highly organized operation.

Inside headquarters, the newly enhanced IWillVote.com is considered a significant improvement on the party’s existing technology. The Democratic National Committee built the website ahead of the 2014 House and Senate elections, one of the party’s worst cycles in recent memory. The first iteration of the tool amounted to a one-stop shop where voters could find information about their state’s registration rules and dates.

Two years later, in July, the Clinton campaign began a major overhaul of the site.

The rebuilt version allows voters to go step by step through the registration process in every state, allowing the campaign to see how much of the registration process each voter completes, and follow up individually with the people who started but did not complete the form. From Tuesday’s drive, the official said, Clinton operatives now have the ability to identify and contact an additional 120,000 people who began registering.

The effort also featured events across the country and what the campaign described as an “aggressive” push across platforms from surrogates and celebrities, including singers Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, Hollywood fixtures Shonda Rhimes andGeorge Takei, and the president himself, who joined Ryan Seacrest’s popular radio show to help promote the website and its Spanish-language counterpart, VoyaVotar2016.com.

The coordinated effort resulted in 292 million “earned social media impressions” over the course of Tuesday, the campaign official said, and continued into the week. (On Thursday, two days into the registration drive, one of Clinton’s most enthusiastic celebrity boosters, singer Katy Perry, tweeted in all capital letters, “HOW MANY MORE FUNNY THINGS DO WE HAVE TO DO TO GET YA TO THE POLLS NOV 8TH?!”)

The campaign’s tech department, staffed with about 70 people, is led by a former director at Google, Stephanie Hannon, who recruited members of her team from Silicon Valley. A 10-person voter and volunteer-focused team within the department, known internally as the “Voter Agile” team, worked on the registration project through the summer and early fall, building out the various features on the website — tools that allow users to request to vote by mail or encourage their friends to register. (The Voter Agile team is also responsible for a polling place lookup tool and online call tool.)

Clinton does not speak with natural ease about the world of technology, often spelling out her website URL or SMS sign-up number for crowds as if addressing something vaguely foreign. (“Go to ‘Hillary Clinton Dot Com’ or text ‘Join’ — J-O-I-N — to 4-7-2-4-6 to get involved!” she says slowly.) But the 68-year-old candidate, known for an attention to detail and penchant for exhaustive preparation, does appear to delight in her campaign’s exacting field program and attempts at even the slightest advantage.

Aboard her campaign plane on Thursday, as she took questions from reporters, Clinton could not help but mention another one of the tech team’s recent projects — a “college calculator” that allows voters to see how much her student debt plan might help them save. “I love my college calculator. I hope you all will write about it again!” she said.

Clinton has also shown a heightened attention throughout this campaign, her second presidential, to the organizing philosophy her manager Robby Mook has made a trademark. In the primaries, she tailored her events, her schedule, even her remarks, to a strategy aimed at building an organization of passionate volunteers to help get out the vote. (“One of the things I learned last time is, it’s organize, organize, organize,” she said last spring in one of the first interviews of her campaign.) It was the field program in Iowa that delivered the narrow victory she needed badly in those first caucuses.

Through the general election, Clinton has remained committed to the strategy, making a point of speaking directly to voters in ways designed to boost the state field programs — and often doing so with an incredible specificity not often seen from candidates.

This summer, at a rally in West Philadelphia, Clinton not only urged voters to register to vote — she personally instructed them from the stage on how to sign up (“the deadline for registering is Oct. 11”), where and when to canvass (“we have packets for you at the door so you can also canvass, meet your neighbors, canvass across West Philly after this event”), even relating the address of a nearby field office opening (“52nd and Cedar!”).

I keep hearing that Clinton has run the worst campaign in history and has shown no concern whatsoever for the good of the party or down ballot races. This would argue otherwise.

.
digby 10/02/2016 04:30:00 PM

 
Politics and Reality radio: Conason on the Clinton Foundation; Policing with Driverless Cars

by Joshua Holland

This week, we'll speak with Joe Conason about his timely new book, Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton.

Then we'll be joined by Boston Globe transportation columnist Robin Washington to talk about the future of policing in an era of driverless cars. Traffic stops make up fully half of what cops do.





Playlist:
Wyclef Jean: "Heaven's in New York"
The Fugees: "No Woman, No Cry"
Bruce Springsteen: "Backstreets"
digby 10/02/2016 03:00:00 PM

 
Victims of the fever swamp

by digby

This is one of the most disturbing stories I've ever read about one of my fellow Americans. It's about a woman, down on her luck and suffering some mental health issues, who goes down the rabbit hole of the right wing conspiracy fever swamp. Here's a little taste of how she spends her time:

“Oh, look,” she said, reading a headline. “‘A West Virginia member of the House of Delegates says Hillary Clinton should be tried for treason, murder and crimes against the U.S. Constitution and then hung on the Mall in Washington, D.C.’ ”

She scrolled.

“I want to find out if he’s going to the nut house because of it,” she said.

She lit a cigarette and squinted at the screen.

“Look at this,” she said, pointing to a photo of Michelle Obama with a caption suggesting she is a man. “It’s everywhere.”

And then she began explaining, step by step, how she had come to believe that the first lady might actually be a man named Michael.

She figured it started with the Christian televangelists she had followed since the 1980s. In particular, she loved John Hagee, who had said that the Antichrist would appear as a “blasphemer and a homosexual.” And Jerry Falwell, who had blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians.”

“Also,” Melanie said, “Falwell disclosed that the first Christmas Bill and Hillary spent in the White House, Hillary collected ornaments from homosexuals all over the world. And those ornaments were hung in the White House foyer.”

And if that wasn’t enough to prove they were “anti-Bible,” she said, the Clintons went on to support allowing closeted gay people to serve in the military, which she saw as a watershed moment when America began turning away from God.

Then came Obama — “Obama and his gay initiatives,” she said — and her suspicions about him deepened with each one. First he supported allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Then gay marriage. Then came the one that struck Melanie as the strangest and most sinister of all: allowing transgender people to use bathrooms matching their gender identity.

“It’s like he wants to classify us — alpha, beta, gamma, delta,” she said, referring to the dystopian future described in the novel “Brave New World.”

As she tried to understand it all, the best explanation she found was that Obama himself must be gay, a notion introduced and reinforced by all sorts of stories and photos and videos showing up in her Facebook feed. Of these, few were more convincing than a video of the late comedian Joan Rivers, which was what brought her to the matter of the first lady.

“Here we go,” she said now, finding it on her phone.

She read the headline out loud: “Joan Rivers died two months after calling Obama gay and Michelle a transvestite.”

And then she scrolled through one YouTube video after another, including a 13-minute 28-second one with more than 1.4 million views that she watched again now. In it, a reporter asks Rivers when America will have its first gay president. “We already have it with Obama, so let’s just calm down,” Rivers says as she walks away, adding, “You know Michelle is a tranny.” “I’m sorry, she’s a what?” the reporter asks. “A transgender,” Rivers replies. “We all know that.”

“So,” Melanie said, explaining why she thought Rivers was serious. “There are societies out there, especially in Hollywood, that we don’t know about. Joan is in the LGTB community; she’s steeped in it. I watch her stuff on E! Anyone knows that.”

“So,” she continued, “I think if she comes out and says we already have a gay in the White House and Michelle is a tranny, I mean, do you think she’s nuts?”

She took a drag on her cigarette.

“Well, I don’t,” she said, and turned her attention to the question of the Obama children.

“Let’s look,” she said, and began googling.

She started with mrconservative.com, where there was a story, headlined “Evidence Michelle Obama Never Gave Birth to Malia & Sasha,” that said: “We have seen pictures of Barack and Michelle dating back far before they had children, like shots from their wedding, but when it comes to what would have been Michelle’s childbearing years, there is absolutely nothing. Not one picture of her pregnant or with a newborn baby.” It continued: “Ancestry.com and GenealogyBank.com have no records of Malia or Sasha being born,” and also said that “Malia and Sasha [bear] little resemblance to their parents,” which “could very well be because the two girls were adopted, possibly from Morocco.” After reading that, Melanie scrolled through links to versions of the story on americasfreedomfighters.com and redflagnews.com and others among the dozens of similar websites that have proliferated in recent years and draw millions of visitors each month. She looked up from her phone.

“I think those kids were kidnapped,” she said. “We should be looking for those kids’ parents.”


Austin is online often, checking her Facebook and Twitter feeds for stories involving the Obamas and the Clintons, many of which come from conspiracy-theory websites. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
She kept scrolling for more evidence.

“Obama gay is on Infowars,” she said, pausing for a moment on the conspiracy theory website that now had more than 6.9 million U.S. visitors per month and a daily news program hosted by Alex Jones, who had interviewed Donald Trump. “I just want to finish by saying your reputation’s amazing,” Trump had told Jones in December. In May, Jones had devoted his show to “the possibility that Michelle Obama was born a man,” and as the Republican National Convention began, he had hosted a rally attended by Trump adviser Roger Stone. Melanie kept scrolling.

Obama Muslim. Obama ISIS. Christian beheadings. A link to an article on a website called commonsenseshow.com detailing how the U.S. government had imported 30,000 guillotines in preparation for martial law, and explaining that a single guillotine “reportedly can chop off the heads of about 100 people per hour,” so that “in one ten hour day, 30 million people could be executed.”

It was afternoon now, and Melanie got herself a glass of iced tea. She thought about the two legislators who had said Hillary Clinton should be executed, and all the memes, and all the stories on all the websites. The more she read, she said, the more certain she was becoming that she was not out of the ordinary, and that her hospitalization, for instance, was just one more example of an increasingly unjust world. She went over it again: the police cruiser, the injections, the medical bills after. Her hips still hurt. Her gait was off. She was almost out of cigarettes.

Last February she was involuntarily committed for a spell over her obsession with all this nutty stuff. She says this:

“So you see, the media, everybody helped me get to February,” she said, referring to the day the state police took her off to the hospital. “I didn’t get there on my own. But I’m supposed to be the one to pay the price for it for mouthing off? I need to learn my lesson?”

She got up from the table.

“It’s not that I’m some whacked-out whatever,” she said. “I had a lot of help.”

Indeed she did.

And, by the way, Donald Trump is more like her than people care to admit.

.



digby 10/02/2016 01:30:00 PM

 
Yes, he can go lower

by digby

If you thought his making fun of a disabled reporter was a fluke, it wasn't. He's just a common asshole with the emotional maturity of a nasty 7 year old bully.



The first comment on that YouTube is:

"Hillary is ready for death"
digby 10/02/2016 12:00:00 PM

 

'What are you a girl???"

by digby

I didn't think it could get any stupider but by God, it has. Via C&L:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted on Sunday that "science" was on the side of a doctor claiming male Hillary Clinton supporters suffered from low testosterone.

"A doctor [is] under fire for claiming men who support Hillary Clinton likely suffer from low testosterone," Carlson teased before a commercial break. "It's science. You can't deny it." 

"Are you a Low T denier?" he quipped. 

Following the break, Carlson explained that Fort Myers Dr. Dareld Morris was offering a free testosterone test to men who support the Democratic nominee. 

"The question is, can you argue with science?" Carlson said.

digby 10/02/2016 10:30:00 AM

 
Business genius

by digby

How does a business genius lose $916M in a year the stock market returned 37%?

Unless it was a Brewster's Millions-like wager!? https://t.co/ZNH87Q9GAC

— Micah Zenko (@MicahZenko) October 2, 2016

Seriously, people. This business genius lost money in the biggest economic expansion of our lifetime:

This morning Rudy Giuliani, Trump's top adviser, said Trump is a great man, compared him to Steve Jobs and Winston Churchill and called him a business genius.

My God ...

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digby 10/02/2016 09:00:00 AM

 

Trump's something for nothing

by Tom Sullivan

Donald Trump knows the U.S. tax code so well he could probably resolve the national debt by finding a clever way to write it off.

One year of Trump’s tax returns were just revealed. Now we know why he won’t release the rest. https://t.co/oKAhwq8Yrn pic.twitter.com/sEwWNf4mrr

— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) October 2, 2016

The New York Times' Susanne Craig last month received an envelope in the mail containing pages from Donald Trump's 1995 federal tax return. (Craig has written in the past about Trump's finances.) That year Trump claimed more than $900 million in losses. The envelope contains a return address purporting to have come from Trump Tower. It appears, says Think Progress, Trump has a mole:

That means Trump could have made over $50 million a year for nearly two decades and paid nothing in federal taxes. (The I.R.S. lets taxpayers apply loses for up to 18 years to offset future and past income.)

The losses stem from “a dizzying array of deduction, business expenses, real estate depreciation, losses from the sale of business assets and event operating lawsuits” that flow from various entities control by Trump to his “personal tax returns.”

Trump's assets at the time were "hemorrhaging money," according to the Times.

Trump is the first presidential candidate in decades to refuse to release his tax returns, claiming he cannot do it because he is under IRS audit while claiming in nearly the same breath during Monday's debate, “I will release my tax returns against my lawyers wishes, when she [Clinton] releases her 33,000 deleted emails.”

The Times contacted Jack Mitnick, the retired attorney and accountant whose name appeared on the document as the tax preparer. Mitnick declared the document and his signature genuine. Experts the Times called in to examine the pages found no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump even though the $916 million in losses had to be eye-popping for the IRS:

“He has a vast benefit from his destruction” in the early 1990s, said one of the experts, Joel Rosenfeld, an assistant professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Mr. Rosenfeld offered this description of what he would advise a client who came to him with a tax return like Mr. Trump’s: “Do you realize you can create $916 million in income without paying a nickel in taxes?”

Mr. Trump declined to comment on the documents. Instead, the campaign released a statement that neither challenged nor confirmed the $916 million loss.

“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said. “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”

The statement continued, “Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.”

One presumes the Trump campaign did not intend fix in the definition 7 sense.

The Times observes that the pages it obtained revealed little about Trump's charitable giving:

Because the documents sent to The Times did not include any pages from Mr. Trump’s 1995 federal tax return, it is impossible to determine how much he may have donated to charity that year. The state documents do show, though, that Mr. Trump declined the opportunity to contribute to the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Fund, the New Jersey Wildlife Conservation Fund or the Children’s Trust Fund. He also declined to contribute $1 toward public financing of New Jersey’s elections for governor.

His rival for the presidency has been both more forthcoming and more charitable:

For Hillary and Bill Clinton, the total is $23.2 million between 2001 and 2015. That figure comes from the Clintons’ joint tax returns, which the Democratic nominee has released.

In that 15-year period — the years since the Clintons left the White House — they earned about $237 million in adjusted gross income, much of it from speaking fees and book royalties. So Clinton and her husband donated about 9.8 percent of their adjusted gross income.

Trump says he is worth far more than the Clintons. He recently claimed his net worth as more than $10 billion.

But it appears he has donated far less.

The Washington Post has identified about $3.9 million in donations since 2001 from Trump’s own pocket.

At ten percent, the Clintons' charitable giving looks downright biblical. Contrary to the email from your wingnut uncle, the money the Clintons contributed did not go into their own pockets. Trump, however, seems to have used others' donations to his private foundation to pay off his debts:

The Donald J. Trump Foundation has raised very little money over the years and appears to have done little in the way of charitable giving. That’s not the scandal, however. More troubling is the way in which Trump has funded his foundation and then used its resources. Thanks to the dogged reporting of David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, we now know that Trump has apparently directed those who owe him money to donate to the foundation. He has then used money in the foundation to make political donations, buy a portrait of himself, and, even more disturbing, to settle personal and business disputes. That behavior evinces a shocking disregard for the law—one that makes Trump’s boasts about fighting to pay as little income tax as possible even more ominous than they initially sounded.

Tax returns Clinton released for 2015 show she paid taxes at a rate of 34 percent, and more than $43 million in federal taxes since 2007. By Trump's rules, that either makes Hillary Clinton not as smart as he is or more patriotic. She isn't trying her damndest to get America's blessings for nothing.

Trump, of course, is threatening legal action against the Times for the release of the pages. It's a thing the thin-skinned mogul has done before over a joke he doesn't like.


Undercover Blue 10/02/2016 06:00:00 AM

Saturday, October 01, 2016

 
Saturday Night At The Movies

* Dennis is recovering from surgery so I'm re-running this older post that seems unfortunately relevant...
 
Standard Operating Procedure: Wish you were here

by Dennis Hartley

Auschwitz staff, 1944 (Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Abu Ghraib staff, 2004

There was a fascinating documentary that aired recently on the National Geographic Channel calledNazi Scrapbooks from Hell. It was the most harrowing depiction of the Holocaust I’ve seen, but it offered nary a glimpse of the oft-shown photographs of the atrocities themselves. Rather, it focused on photos from a recently discovered scrapbook that belonged to an SS officer assigned to Auschwitz. Essentially an organized, affably annotated gallery of the “after hours” lifestyle of a “workaday” concentration camp staff, it shows cheerful participants enjoying a little outdoor nosh, catching some sun, and even the odd sing-along, all in the shadow of the notorious death factory where they “worked”. If it weren’t for the Nazi uniforms, you might think it was just a bunch of guys from the office, hamming it up for the camera at a company picnic. As the filmmakers point out, it is the everyday “banality” of this evil that makes it so chilling. The most amazing fact is that these pictures were taken in the first place. What were they thinking?

This is the same rhetorical question posed by one of the interviewees in Standard Operating Procedure, a new documentary about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal from renowned filmmaker Errol Morris. The gentleman is a military C.I.D. investigator who had the unenviable task of sifting through the thousands of damning photos taken by several of the perpetrators. Since this is primarily a movie review, I don’t feel a need to rehash the back story for you (especially when a Google search of “Abu Ghraib” yields over 3 million results). We’ve all viewed those thoroughly repulsive photos ad nauseam, and the cold hard facts of the case have been well-documented and endlessly dissected.

The next logical question might be, what was Erroll Morris thinking? What startling new insight could he offer on this well-worn subject? This guy is no slouch-he has been responsible for several of the most well-crafted and compelling American documentaries of the last 30 years, from his 1978 debut Gates of Heaven, (a knockout doc about pet cemeteries) to the true crime classic The Thin Blue Line (1988), and his most recent critical success The Fog of War (2003). Once again, Morris serves up a unique blend of disarmingly intimate confessions, delivered directly into a modified teleprompter by his interviewees, accented by the highly stylized recreations of certain events.

Perhaps in an attempt to avoid flogging a dead torture victim (in a manner of speaking) Morris makes an interesting choice here. He aims his spotlight not so much on analyzing the glaringly obvious inhumanity on display in those sickening photos, but rather on our perception of them. So just who are these people that took them? What was the actual intent behind the self-documentation? Can we conclusively pass judgment on the actions of the people involved, based solely on what we “think” these photographs show us? In a weird way, Morris’ insistence on drawing us “behind” the photo sessions made me flash on Antonioni’s 1966 classic Blow Up. The protagonist in that film is a fashion photographer who becomes obsessed with examining a series of seemingly benign pictures that he takes in a public park. He begins to believe that he has inadvertently documented a murder taking place in the background of the photos…or is he just seeing what he wants to see? The film challenges our perception of what we “see” as reality.

According to Abu Ghraib poster girl Lyddie England and several other of the convicted MPs who Morris interviews in the film, the “reality” behind the prisoner “abuse” was (in their perception ) “standard operating procedure”; they were merely “softening up” the subjects for the CIA interrogators. You know-just doing their job. One phrase you hear over and over is “everybody knew what was going on”, which sounds suspiciously like that old Nuremberg line “we were only following orders”. And so it goes.

Morris also plays up the bizarre “love triangle” aspect of the tale. When asked to explain her willingness to ham it up for the most infamous prisoner humiliation photos, England blames it on amore. “What can I say,” she shrugs, “I was in love.” She is referring to Charles Graner, her then lover/now estranged father of their lovechild, currently serving 10 years for his part in the scandal (Morris was denied permission by the military to interview him). As we now know, Graner was concurrently “dating” another MP, Megan Ambuhl, who has since become his wife (it’s all so…Jerry Springer). Here’s a sobering thought: Thanks to the methodical “softening up” of America’s prestige conducted by the Bush white house during its first four years, all it took was a taxpayer-funded white trash scrapbook from hell to drive the final nail into its coffin.

Morris has taken some flak for focusing only on those who some may consider the low-level “scapegoats” of the Abu Ghraib debacle; these critics seem to be implying that he is not targeting high enough in the food chain. There is some merit in this assertion; the only “brass” featured in the film is the palpably embittered ex-brigadier general and former Abu Ghraib overseer Janis Karpinski, who angrily asserts that she was treated to a dog and pony show whenever she visited the facilities. But in all fairness, Morris does not have the hindsight of history on his side in this case. We can’t expect anything close to that great final shot in All the President's Men of the teletype keys pounding out the Nixon resignation bulletin. In a truly fair and balanced universe, the only satisfactory denouement to any story about the Iraq “war” should be a closing shot of a spinning newspaper, finally righting itself to declare “Bush and Cheney to be Impeached For War Crimes!” The Nixon administration is history. We’re still living this nightmare.

--- DH

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digby 10/01/2016 05:00:00 PM

 
Welp, I guess we know why the white supremacists love him so much

by digby

That's just creepy.





digby 10/01/2016 03:30:00 PM

 
The sloppy Don

by digby

The next time one of Trump's shameless surrogates smears Alicia Machado with an alleged relationship with Mexican drug lords (based on Drudge laundered lies in the Daily Mail) maybe someone should mention this from Slate last spring which is actually well-sourced:

[T]here is another figure from that era [the 1980s] whose connections to Trump have been covered less, but might be more troubling: Joseph Weichselbaum. A 1991 piece in Spy, a 1992 book by reporter Wayne Barrett, and a recent investigation by theSmoking Gun detailed the Weichselbaum-Trump relationship; here's a summary. (I don't have Barrett's book—I'm working off this 1992 piece about it.)

In the mid-'80s, Spy/Barrett/the Smoking Gun say, Weichselbaum worked for a helicopter company that shuttled clients to and from Trump's Atlantic City casinos. Spy and TSG say Weichselbaum had previously been convicted of grand theft auto and embezzlement. Spy says Weichselbaum was the general manager of the Trump-connected helicopter company from 1983 until 1986 and that his brother Frank Weichselbaum was one of the men who owned it.

In October 1985, Weichselbaum was charged with trafficking cocaine and marijuana through Florida to Ohio, Kentucky, and North Carolina. He wasindicted in Ohio and ultimately pleaded guilty to two felonies in the case. Spyand TSG say he cooperated with authorities in the case.

After Weichselbaum was indicted but before he went to prison, per Spy andTSG, he began renting an apartment in the Trump Plaza building in Manhattan. The Smoking Gun says that Trump owned the individual unit and rented it directly to Weichselbaum as a landlord.
Both Spy and the Smoking Gun say that while Weichselbaum's trafficking case was pending the Trump Plaza unit was partly paid for in "barter"—i.e. in-kind services provided by Weichselbaum's helicopter company. 

During this time, Weichselbaum applied for a change of venue in his cocaine case. The case was transferred from Ohio to Newark, New Jersey, where the new judge in his case was ... 

Maryanne Trump Barry, Donald Trump's sister! She then handed the case off to a different judge, to whom Trump wrote a letter asking for leniency for Weichselbaum before his November 1987 sentencing. (Spy, TSG, and Barrett's book all report on the letter.) 

Weichselbaum was convicted of two felony charges and ultimately received a three-year sentence. He spent about 18 months in prison beginning in January 1988. After he was released, he moved into a different Trump property—Trump Tower—in an apartment that TSG and Spy say his girlfriend had purchased. Spysays Weichselbaum told his parole board he planned to work for Trump after his release. 

Spy, Barrett, and TSG say Trump continued to pay Weichselbaum's erstwhile company—which per Spy went bankrupt and re-formed itself under a new name twice during the time Trump was paying it—for helicopter services after his indictment. Spy specifically says the payments continued until 1990. 

Trump launched his own New York–Atlantic City helicopter service in 1988.

Per the Smoking Gun, Weichselbaum is now 74 and living in Los Angeles and does not appear to have had further troubles with the law. (His son, however, at one point spent 46 months in prison an now, according to the Smoking Gun, runs a X-rated webcam business.)

In summary, multiple outlets have reported that Donald Trump vouched for and rented an apartment to Joseph Weichselbaum—a known felon and soon-to-be-convicted drug trafficker. For some still-unknown reason, Weichselbaum's drug prosecution passed briefly through Trump's sister's courtroom in a state that had no apparent connection to the case. And Trump continued to pay Weichselbaum's helicopter company after Weichselbaum was convicted and (according to Spy) after Trump had founded his own helicopter business.

A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about Trump's relationship with Weichselbaum.

Now why would Trump, of all people, the man who stiff virtually everyone, continue to pay for the service he didn't need that was owned by a convicted felon?

There are so many stories of Trump's involvement with mobsters and people like this he really should be more careful about opening these cans of worms. He was in the gambling business fergawdsakes. Of course he's connected. Why anyone in his position would think it's a good idea to run for office is beyond me.

His trio of Fredos are no better:



.


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digby 10/01/2016 02:00:00 PM